Map and Attribute Information
Define the following: data, attribute, record, value, and database. Using as an example the Yellow Pages part of a telephone directory for your town, discuss how you would build a database to hold the list information. What parts of the Yellow Pages attributes are geographic references?
To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.
Map Scale and Projections
Using an atlas, make a list of as many map projections as you can find. Are any of the atlas maps not annotated with their projection? Make a table listing the properties of each of the projections, plus any other information you can find out, for example, whether the projection is secant, transverse, based on an ellipsoid, conformal, and so on. In a final column, state what properties are distorted on the map, for example, "Map distorts area increasingly as one moves north and south."
Consult one of the sources listed in the references section and try to find the sizes of as many ellipsoids as possible. Are any of them more or less suitable for foreign countries? Select a country, for example Egypt or Australia, and research what ellipsoids have been used and whether any particular projection is favored for that country. Why would one projection be better than another?
Find the regulation sizes of either a baseball diamond or a soccer field. Draw maps of the fields at the following scales: 1:1000, 1:24,000, 1:100,000, and 1:1 million. What problems do you run into? What would be the effect of mapping both a winding river and an irregular patch of forest at these scales?
Coordinate Systems
The chapter covers several different coordinate systems. Determine which coordinate systems are shown on a map of your local area.
For a single location, such as your house or school, try to find the coordinates of the position in as many coordinate systems as possible. How might you make sure that your result from the map is correct?
Geographic Information
Make a table of levels of measurement versus dimension. In each cell of the table, write in as many types of geographic data or features as you can think of.
Using the example of a lake, write out sample measurements that might describe each of the major geographic properties covered in Figure 2.17. For example, the size of the lake is its area in square meters. For which properties is it most difficult to think of representative numbers?
